Clean Plants

Clean Plants. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Vicky Scharlau has been at the forefront of a movement to assure that what vineyards are planting are clean plants, without any kinds of disease or infestations. SCHARLAU: The Washington wine industry, both growers and wineries for over a decade have understood that we have to have an infrastructure that allows growers to go back to a mother source for clean plants. To do that's a fairly complicated, convoluted, expensive process. It's true in wine grapes. It's true in citrus. It's true in tree fruit. It's true in hops. It is true for any kind of ag operation and Scharlau says it was important for them to create the infrastructure to serve the industry. SCHARLAU: We realized that our infrastructure wasn't big enough and capable of our sustained growth. So we started working on this 10 years ago. Congress passed the 2008 Farm Bill. They included the National Clean Plant Network to help build this infrastructure for multiple crops. If Congress doesn't pass the Farm Bill when they go back to work - they have to specifically pass the Farm Bill that includes the National Clean Plant Network. They can't just roll the Farm Bill over because this program was new this last go-around. She reiterated that if they don't pass this the bill with this portion specifically added, it will be dropped and that would mean they would have to get very creative in keeping the clean plant infrastructure in place. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.